Beyond Words Publishing is a book

publishing Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

company located in

Hillsboro, Oregon Hillsboro ( ) is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Situated in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city hosts many high-technology companies, ...

, United States. Founded in 1983, the company was unprofitable in its early years, though its works were award-winning. The privately owned company focuses on non-fiction titles in the

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...

genre (now generally referred to as mind-body-spirit category), but began as a publisher of

coffee table books A coffee table book, also known as a cocktail table book, is an oversized, usually hardcover, hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a coffee table, table intended for use in an area in which one entertains guests and from which it can ...

. Beyond Words has a national distribution agreement with

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...

's Altria Books

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and has published works by John Gray,

Masaru Emoto was a Japanese businessman, author and pseudoscientist who claimed that human consciousness could affect the molecular structure of water. His 2004 book '' The Hidden Messages in Water'' was a New York Times best seller. His conjecture evolved o ...

, and

Rhonda Byrne Rhonda Byrne ( ; née Izon; born 1951, Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian television writer and producer. Her book '' The Secret'' is based on the belief of the pseudoscientific law of attraction, which claims that thoughts can change a p ...

, including her book '' The Secret''.

History

Beyond Words Publishing was founded in 1983 by Richard Cohn, Bob Goodman, and Cindy Black in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

. Black and Cohn later married. The company started after Cohn's family sold Cohn Bros. furniture company to McMahan's Furniture in 1982 and Cohn was looking for a new direction. The company's first book, ''Within a Rainbowed Sea'', came out in 1984. The

coffee table book A coffee table book, also known as a cocktail table book, is an oversized, usually hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a table intended for use in an area in which one entertains guests and from which it can serve to inspire convers ...

won 11 awards at the New York Art Directors Show and was named the most outstanding book of the year by the

Printing Industries of America Printing Industries of America was a nonprofit trade association which advocates for the United States printing industry. It was the world’s largest graphic arts trade association, representing more than 6,500 member companies and an industry w ...

in 1984. Focused on images of sea life by Christopher Newbert, the book is hound bound using Niger goatskin and kept in a box made of koa wood and lined with Brazilian suede. Sold for $2,250, the book was given to Japanese Emperor

Hirohito Emperor , commonly known in English-speaking countries by his personal name , was the 124th emperor of Japan, ruling from 25 December 1926 until his death in 1989. Hirohito and his wife, Empress Kōjun, had two sons and five daughters; he was ...

on his 80th birthday by then U.S. President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

. A calendar featuring the images took second place in a Printing Industries of America competition in 1988. As of 1988 there were four editions and 52,000 copies of the book. The company's second book was ''Molokai: An Island in Time'' by photographer Richard Cooke III; it came out in 1985. The publishing company relocated to Oregon in 1986 where it was incorporated, and by 1988 Bob Goodman had left the company, which had failed to turn a profit after putting out 12 titles. Beyond Words settled on Cohn's farm near Hillsboro. Both of the first two books were printed by Oregon printer Dynagraphics, Inc., with printing costs exceeding $500,000 for the books that were to retail for $2,000 each. Beyond Words had an exclusive distribution with

Waldenbooks Waldenbooks, operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain, from 1995 as a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a ...

for the first two titles, but the deal later fell through. The company was left deeply in debt after these two books, with founder Black taking a job to help pay off the debt. In October 1988, a lawsuit between the printer Dynagraphics and U. S. National Bank concerned Beyond Words' ability to pay its bill to Dynagraphics for the printing. Dynagraphics won the lawsuit for $321,000 when the jury decided that the bank had a duty to warn Dynagraphics that co-owner Cohn lacked the funds to pay for the printing of the two books that were part of their Earthsong Project. The company published ''The American Eagle'', a 128-page coffee table book in 1988 by Tom and Pat Leeson. Books by the company in the early years revolved around

philosophy and themes. In 1990, they were the first publishers of works by author and therapist John Gray, printing ''Men, Women and Relationships''. Gray then went to another company with Beyond Words' blessing, and published '' Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus''. In 1994, the headquarters were moved to Hillsboro near the

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...

as the company had expanded to 12 employees. By 1995, Beyond Words was publishing around ten books per year and expanded from coffee table books into titles concerning Native American wisdom, health, personal growth, and children's literature. Sales at that time totaled $1.8 million per year. To drive sales, the company was innovative with marketing, with activities such as promoting books at tourist attractions like zoos, selling through fundraisers, and co-marketing with other publishers. Beyond Words partnered with Flying Rhino Productions in 1995. Beyond Words Publishing headquarters

Beyond Words moved into an office along

Cornell Road Cornell Road is an east–west street and traffic corridor in the Portland metropolitan area, in Multnomah and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. It crosses the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills) between the Willamette Valley and the ...

in the Tanasbourne neighborhood of Hillsboro in 2006. In 2004, the company was struggling and considered filing for bankruptcy protection until a new investor was brought on board. That year, Beyond Words had its first big success, after more than 250 titles to their name, with

's ''Hidden Messages of Water''. The book sold enough to make the

New York Times Best Seller list ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times ...

and sold a total of half a million copies. The company started a partnership with publisher

's subsidiary Atria Books in 2006. That same year, the company had a dinner party where one of the commentators from ''The Secret'' DVD convinced the group to watch the video, which led to the publication of the book, '' The Secret'' by

. By March 2007, the book had become the top seller on

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as well as appearing on ''The New York Times'' bestseller list, and had 1.75 million copies in print. That month Simon & Schuster ordered an additional 2 million copies, the largest reorder in their history. By 2003, ''The Secret'' had over five million copies in hardcover.

Founders

Richard Cohn grew up in Oregon in Northeast Portland before he attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and the

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China. It is consistently ranked one of th ...

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

. He then entered the family's furniture business, where he worked for 13 years. He was divorced in 1976, and met co-founder Cindy Black in 1982 in Hawaii after the family business was sold. They moved in together and later married. A fortune teller had foretold of the meeting, and that he would move to Hawaii. Both Cohn and Black took a New Age class at the Burklyn Business School in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, which helped lay the foundation for starting Beyond Words. In Hawaii, Cohn met a photographer who knew his sister, and with publisher Bob Goodman started a publishing company to produce the photographer's work. The founders divorced in 2008 but continue on as business partners.

Operations

Privately held Beyond Words is headquartered in the

, in the

Portland metropolitan area The Portland metropolitan area is a metro area in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington centered on the principal city of Portland, Oregon. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) identifies it as the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, ...

. The company publishes 15 new books every year, mainly in the New Age, non-fiction genre through their partnership with Atria Books. Independently they are wholesalers of their titles for international distribution, and operate Beyond Distribution as a subsidiary for releases of other media such as videos. The company has its editors, designers, and printers work with each author, which is atypical in the publishing world. Their philosophy helped turn the company into a "national leader", or as Susan Reich of

Publishers Group West Publishers Group West (PGW) is a book distributor founded in 1976 in Berkeley, California, which distributes to bookstores in the U.S. and internationally. They were the largest distributor of independent presses in the U.S. in the 1990s. In 2007, ...

stated, "They are one of a few independent publishers who can do beautiful photography books, very finely produced."

Selected titles

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References

External links

''Publishing Lives: Interviews with Independent Book Publishers in the Pacific''
– by Jerome Gold {{Authority control Publishing companies established in 1983 Companies based in Hillsboro, Oregon Book publishing companies based in Oregon Privately held companies based in Oregon 1983 establishments in Oregon